Thanks to a new MeDiCI cache RCC installed recently, UQ has arguably one of the best microscopy facilities with the fastest data capture capabilities in Australasia.
RCC has installed a new IBM Spectrum Scale-powered cache in UQ’s MeDiCI (Metropolitan Data Caching Infrastructure) data storage fabric and positioned it within UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) and the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI).
The cache will provide high-speed protocol node access to various scientific instruments in this campus zone, as well as fast access to UQ Research Data Manager (UQRDM) collections.
The new cache’s first user was the IMB Microscopy facility, one of UQ's peak data generators, housing the Lattice Light Sheet Microscope and the Andor Dragonfly, amongst other instruments.
Dr James Springfield, IMB’s Microscopy Facility Manager, has achieved more than two gigabytes per second on microscopy instruments connected to this new data storage platform.
“This is a speed-up of over four times compared to legacy infrastructure, which was running sub 500 megabytes per second,” said RCC Chief Technology Officer Jake Carroll.
“This is important for James as the amount of data he deals with grows on almost a Moore’s law tracking curve. He had been struggling with legacy I/O [input/output] issues with the old storage infrastructure.”
Dr Springfield said the network and storage upgrades allow IMB Microscopy facility users to transfer a terabyte of newly acquired experimental data in under 10 minutes, as compared to hours previously. “This increases throughput and efficiency of use of our instruments, as well as enabling processing of big data on our custom-built Image Processing Portal for the Wiener HPC,” he said.
The new storage technology mixes the MeDiCI fabric and protocol nodes with the UQRDM approach to data management and the UQ ITS-provided 100 GB per second network.
For information on how to access the IMB Microscopy facility, please contact: microscopes@imb.uq.edu.au, or visit: https://imb.uq.edu.au/microscopy.
